Create a Consistent, Measurable Process to Support First Time Managers

According to the 2017 Brandon Hall Onboarding Survey, 53% of organizations have formal onboarding processes for promotions.

More and more, organizations are beginning to see the importance of extending the onboarding experience to additional inflection points in the employee life cycle, such as promotions, transfers, family leave, and projects. Creating experiences around these milestones or touch points continually sets employees up for success throughout their journey by delivering the right content to the right people at the right time. Each of these experiences should be as designed and intentional as the new hire experience so as to create a continuum of engagement and investment in achieving the organization's goals. For example, let's take a transition, such as a promotion for an employee who is becoming a first-time manager. By extending the onboarding experience, organizations can serve up journeys that include training content, introductions to mentors, goal setting, and activities that help them assimilate to their new team.  Ultimately, this helps the first time manager understand the expectations of their new role and contextualizes it to organizational strategy, acquaints them to their new team, provides them the development resources they need to fill skills gaps, and maintains engagement with the organization. Check out the video below to learn more about first time manager transitions.    TRANSCRIPT: A lot of people think onboarding is a one time, one size fits all process that streamlines paperwork and gives the new hire a good head start on the first day, and it works. It reduces paperwork and first day information overload and helps your new hire be productive from day one. At Silk Road, we've learned a lot from over 1,000 strategic onboarding customers. What they tell us is that onboarding is not a one time event. There are other transitions in the employee journey. Strategic onboarding continually sets people up for success by delivering the right content, the right development, at the right time. With Silk Road, every transition can be as carefully planned and as fully engaging as that initial new hire experience. Let's look at the first time manager transition. For a lot of employees, taking on this role is a career milestone. With Silk Road, you can easily deliver a consistent, engaging first time manager experience that fits your organization and transition process, create meaningful touchpoints that sustain learning and career development, connect the first time managers with a mentor to develop 90 day plans, connect them with their team, and coach new managers on how to give and receive feedback, set up ongoing check ins to discuss expectations and goals, encourage team recognition by spotlighting great work and even build a cross-functional support system for future managers. Best of all, you create a consistent, measurable process that supports every first time manager. Modify the touchpoints and steps by job, region, role, and language so it's personalized. Collect and gather data on program effectiveness and how it affects business goals. Your first time managers will be better prepared and onboarded correctly to their new leadership roles. Every transition needs proper on boarding to increase employee engagement. Keep onboarding and keep people onboard.